Bono has apologised for the way U2's new album Songs Of Innocence ended up in people's iTunes libraries ahead of the release of the CD version.
According to Britain's Official Charts Company midweek update, U2 were set to enter at No4, behind Ella Henderson, Ed Sheeran and Jessie J. The CD version of Songs of Innocence features 10 additional tracks, including six acoustic versions and four new songs, in a bid to maximise sales from the Irish band's core fans.
During a Facebook chat, Bono apologised for "dumping" the album on to the library of 500 million iTunes users. "I had this beautiful idea. We got carried away with ourselves. There's a lot of noise out there. I guess we got a little noisy ourselves to get through it."
Apple said the album had been downloaded 26 million times during the free offer, which has ended.
When a Facebook fan told Bono that distributing the album as web "spam" was "really rude", the singer replied: "Oops, I'm sorry about that."
